The role of marketing mix (the 7 Ps) in patients’ attitudes to Iranian hospitals based on their kind of ownership (case study in Iran)

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Disregard of marketing approaches, mutual profits of service providers and service users in the health-care section causes patients' dissatisfaction. This study aimed to investigate the role of the components of the marketing mix (7 Ps) in patients' tendency towards hospitals based on the kind of ownership.

Method: This applied study was a descriptive-analytical research conducted in 2016 in two hospitals of Mazandaran Province, Iran. The research sample included 400 personnel (200 therapeutic and 200 non-therapeutic) selected by applying a stratified random sampling. They completed a valid and reliable standard questionnaire on marketing mix with seven components (7ps). Data were analyzed in SPSS 22.

Findings: The highest mean belonged to the component price in both the teaching hospital (3.78 ± .58) and the social security one (4.03 ± .72). In the teaching hospital, the components product (p = .024), price and place (p < .001) and promotion (p = .015) had significant relationship with patients' tendency and in the social security hospital, the components price, place and personnel (p <. 001) showed such a relationship.

Conclusion: Price, place, and personnel in the social security hospital and price, place, promotion and product in the teaching hospital were the main factors at work in marketing mix in patients' tendency to select health services.

KEYWORDS:

• Hospitals
• marketing
• patients
• ownership

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge all personnel of the hospitals for their participation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Conflict of interests

There was no conflict of interests between the findings and the studied hospitals and findings were directly extracted from data relating to the hospitals.